


Small Kindnesses

by Eridani_Dreams



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: Acts of Kindness, Fluff, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 15:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20010490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eridani_Dreams/pseuds/Eridani_Dreams
Summary: Adam loses a coat and saves a life. Fair trade, he thinks.





	Small Kindnesses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RememberPanchaea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RememberPanchaea/gifts), [TrulyCertain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrulyCertain/gifts), [GenesisArclite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenesisArclite/gifts).



Adam likes heights. He has ever since middle school, when he'd escape to the school roof to avoid the rich kids that tried to bully him for being poor. Up high, it's quiet. He can have a smoke, let the wind ruffle his hair, be nothing and no one but himself. Sometimes it's the only peace he gets.

He's sitting on top of the abandoned LIMB clinic near the metro station when he hears a muffled sob. At first he thinks he's hearing things; in all the months he's lived in Prague, he's never run into anyone else up here. When he hears it again, he checks it out.

It's a dark-haired young woman, somewhere in that gawky part of the late teens where nothing quite works like it's supposed to. She's got her arms wrapped around her shins and her face buried in her knees, and she's sitting a lot closer to the edge than he's really comfortable with. She hears him come around, snaps her head up in startlement, and her eyes are swollen with tears. She blurts something at him in Czech, but the wind whips her words away and he doesn't quite catch it, even with augmented hearing.

He gives her his friendliest smile, says one of the Czech phrases he's memorized: " _Nemluvím česky. Mluvíš anglicky?_ " _I don't speak Czech. Do you speak English?_

She looks at him with wide eyes, like a startled deer about to run, but says, in a trembling voice, " _Ano._ Yes, I speak some Anglish." She sounds almost confused, like it's not how she expected the conversation to go.

"Yeah?" Adam takes the opening, sits down a few arms-lengths away from her. _I'm harmless, see?_ "Do you come up here often?"

She shakes her head. She doesn’t look at him straight-on, just keeps darting little glances at him out of the corner of her eye. It’s not the usual kind of look he gets as the ‘scary aug,’ more just the ‘strange man’ type of look. He can live with that. “I do,” he says, casually, like it’s just a regular conversation and not him talking a scared young woman off a ledge. “I like to come up and watch the lights shine on the water.”

She stares out toward the Vltava. “It looks very cold,” she says.

Adam’s lips quirk in a wry smile of remembrance. “It is,” he agrees.

She shivers, and he realizes that it’s not just the mention of the cold water, that the beat-up hoodie she’s wearing isn’t nearly enough to keep her warm. He has to ask. “Is everything okay?”

She doesn’t answer him for a long moment. He concentrates on letting her see his concern—it’s hard, he’s gotten into the habit of hiding his feelings—and not making any movements she might consider threatening. “Cold is supposed to make it easier,” she finally says.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “I’ve heard that. It’s never true.”

Now she looks at him full-on. “What do you know about it?”

Adam picks his words carefully. “Cold…just hurts in a different way. It’s not harder, or easier, just different.” Adam props his arm on one knee in a deliberate echo of her posture. He’s mirroring her, every motion slow and careful, trying to convince her on a level below words that he can be trusted. “Would you like to talk about it?”

She ducks her head. “It’s stupid.” There’s tension in every inch of her posture. Even if she’s not quite ready to jump, she’s tempted to run, and that could end just as badly.

He’s not sure he could catch her if she jumped, Icarus or not. So he makes his voice as gentle as he can—he knows how he tends to sound, rough and blunt and impatient—and says, “Sometimes people call things ‘stupid’ because they don’t understand, or they don’t know what to do, or they’re scared.” He glances briefly in her direction. “Whatever you say, I promise I won’t think it’s stupid.” He looks back out over the cityscape. “And if you don’t want to talk, that’s okay too. Just—” he shrugs himself out of his coat. The wind’s bitter, but his augs will hold him for awhile. “Can I—” he offers it to her.

She shrugs. He takes it as assent and, a little awkwardly, leans over to drape it around her. She doesn’t say anything, but her fingers clutch the lapels and draw it close, and in a little while, she stops shivering. It’s much longer before she starts to talk, but he’s patient.

“My uncle says I cry too much,” she finally says, quietly enough that he wouldn’t have heard it without augmented hearing.

“In my experience,” he says, equally quietly, “most people don’t cry without a good reason.”

She shrugs again. “My father is dead. I miss him.” She says it so simply, and yet there’s such a freight of pain in her voice that Adam’s heart aches.

“Yeah, that’s a good reason,” he agrees. He thinks of the people he’s lost, how the wounds may not be fresh, but they’re still painful. “It hurts to lose people we love. It’s kind of a package deal.” His fingers itch for a cigarette, and he’s downwind of her; he figures it’ll be okay—except that they’re still in the pocket of his coat, and he’s not going to ask for it back. He’ll just have to live with it. “The only way not to hurt is not to love. Me, I don’t think that’s a good trade.”

Her voice is plaintive. “Why do you care?” There’s so many ways he could parse that. He settles on the one that feels the most true.

“Someone has to,” Adam says. He waves his hand out over the city. “That—all of that—was built by people who cared. The whole world is built by people who care.” He looks at her, not entirely sure she understands. Hell, he’s not sure _he_ understands. “As long as there’s enough people who care, it doesn’t matter that there’s a lot of people who don’t. The world will keep spinning.”

She’s quiet for a long time, like she’s thinking about it. It’s pretty heady stuff for a teenager, but he’s always thought that kids were tougher than anyone gave them credit for.

“Not to care…” she’s putting the words together, carefully, and he can’t tell if it’s because she’s struggling to get the words out in English, or if it’s just the way she’s forming the thought. “Not to love—is like not to live. To die.” She looks down into the dark, and Adam wonders if he’s going to have to catch her after all. “Would you…care?”

There’s an ache in his throat when he replies. “Yeah, I would. You, uh, you study poetry in school?” She nods, cautiously. “There’s a really old poem in English. ‘Every man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.’”

She gives him an odd look, one he can’t quite decipher. “You don’t look like the kind of person who likes poetry.”

He laughs a little, softly. “What kind of person do I look like?” He meant it as a joke, but she took it seriously.

“A little scary,” she whispers, with a blush. “But you only look scary. I’m not scared. You’re—you’re very nice.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “My father always said not to judge by looks. I’m—I’m glad you were up here.”

“So am I,” Adam says, honestly. They sit there like that for a while longer in a companionable silence.

She looks down at the ground again. “Um...I’m not sure how I’m going to get down from here.”

**ΔX**

It’s a few weeks later, and Adam’s been busy; he hasn’t exactly forgotten, but it hasn’t been on his mind. He misses the coat, but he figures it’s a small price to pay for a young woman’s life, and leaves it at that. It’s the end of a long, rough day, and he’s more concerned about whether there’s yet another problem with his license when he’s pulled out of line at the metro. He’s only a little relieved when he recognizes the officer that pulls him out. “Still expecting something good to happen?” she asks.

“Seems to be working so far,” Adam comments. “What do you need?”

He reaches for his papers, but she waves him down. “No, no. I am merely curious why a woman would be in this quarter, looking for a tall, dark, heavily-augmented man with mirrorshades, with only the description but no name.” She looks at him for a reaction, but he only shrugs. “She said the mystery aug was the reason her daughter came home alive a few weeks ago. When she told me that, I thought of you.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I just...she just needed someone to listen to her.”

She tilts her head. “You keep making me rethink my complicity in the ongoing police state, you know that?” It’s a running joke between them.

“Maybe being a child of this moment in history means being in a position to make a difference,” he responds. It’s something he’s considered saying before.

She looks thoughtful. “Perhaps. In any case, the difference I am making today is to make sure that the gift she left actually gets to you, instead of being stolen by my corrupt colleagues.” She hands him a cardboard box, neatly wrapped in white paper. It’s surprisingly heavy for its size.

He’s startled. “Thanks,” he says, meaning it. “That actually does make a difference.” He offers her a small but genuine smile. “Like I said, seems to be working so far.”

She smiles back. “Go home, Detroit. Have a nice night.”

He doesn’t open the package until he gets home, although his curiosity is eating him alive. There’s a note on top of something wrapped in tissue paper. He starts there. It’s in Czech, but it’s simple enough that he doesn’t need help translating it.

_I hope this finds its way to you. Thank you for saving my daughter’s life. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, please do not hesitate to ask._

The address is in one of the working-class neighborhoods of the city. He doesn’t think he’ll ever follow up on it, that’s not why he stopped in the first place, but he’s warmed by the sentiment regardless. He flips open the tissue paper to find--his coat, cleaned, mended, in better shape than it has been in years. Tucked inside the coat is a box that smells like chocolate and cinnamon, and is full of cookies. There’s another note in the box, written in careful English. _Thank you, Mr. Scary Nice Man._ He can’t help but smile.

Adam has one of the cookies. It tastes like hope.


End file.
